Now grown up: the Rwandan genocide orphans who found a bigger family

By Reuters - 04 April 2019 - 16:41

Ruhumuriza Vincent De Paul, who was orphaned by genocide, puts a meal on a plate in the dinning hall at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) built to rehabilitate children who lost their families in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in Eastern Rwanda this week. Image: REUTERS/Jean Bizimana

Vincent de Paul Ruhumuriza was born in Rwanda just a few months before genocide consigned his father to an unknown grave and traumatized his mother so badly she still screams and shakes at any mention of that time.

But, helped by a model of healing dating back to the Holocaust, the 25-year-old has finished his education and blended into a new family, where individuals grieving lost loved ones have rebuilt their lives by caring for each other.

"People should not be driven by the past," the bearded young man told Reuters this week, as the country prepared to mark a quarter of a century since Hutu militias killed around 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

"I want to grow into someone who will benefit society."

Seven years ago, Ruhumuriza's life was on course to become another small tragedy in a nation where every family is touched by grief.

He and his mother lived in poverty. His father's death in the genocide was a mystery - the only time he ever tried to ask about it, his mother had a breakdown.

"Other people ... told how she was beaten, how she was tortured, got raped," he said. "She became like a mad person. She got traumatized."

THE PLACE WHERE TEARS ARE DRIED

Then, in 2014, just as Ruhumuriza was about to drop out, his school got in touch with the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, whose Hebrew-Kinyarwandan name translates as "the place where tears are dried".

The village was set up in 2008 by a South African-born lawyer, Anne Heyman, who had worked in the United States.

Heyman and her husband raised more than $12 million (R170.28 million) to help care for families ripped apart by the genocide, taking their model from Israel's Youth Villages, which created new families for children whose parents had died in the Holocaust.

Rwanda's genocide, sparked by the assassination of the president, lasted around 100 days and stopped after rebels fought their way to the capital, led by Paul Kagame, Rwanda's current ruler.

More than 95,000 children were orphaned, the United Nations estimates, and around 300,000 children were killed. For some of the survivors, Heyman's village offered healing and purpose.

"Having 15 children around you can calling you Mama, and you helping them to conquer their past, that is a great contribution to the nation," said Emeritha Mukarusagara, a slender, bespectacled 57-year-old with long braids who became a foster mother after being widowed in the genocide.

She spent months hidden by a neighbour, heavily pregnant, terrified and filled with grief for her murdered husband. She keeps his picture on her phone but still cannot discuss his death.

Since then, she has fostered dozens of vulnerable children, including Ruhumuriza, who needed families.

NEW PURPOSE

A shy teenager, he arrived into a large, boisterous community where children live 15 to a house, watched over by a strict but loving foster parent they are all encouraged to call Mama.

It was strange to call another woman Mama, he said. It was even stranger to have a brother. He liked it.